


The Weight of a Songbird

by poptod



Category: The Pacific (TV)
Genre: Character Death, Drabble, F/M, Fluff and Angst, Gen, M/M, Not Actually Unrequited Love, Secret Crush, Teasing, Violence, War, gender neutral reader
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-04
Updated: 2019-11-04
Packaged: 2021-01-22 18:29:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,342
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21306608
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/poptod/pseuds/poptod
Summary: It's all hazy, and you never fully realize your own condition. You hallucinate and dissociate during battle, during mealtime, frequently and at the expense of your own health. You're saved by a man who's just looking out for you, but he's not exactly entirely neurotypical either.(Gender neutral reader)
Relationships: Merriel "Snafu" Shelton/Reader
Comments: 2
Kudos: 7





	The Weight of a Songbird

**Author's Note:**

> short little drabble. enjoy

Everything collapsed into a tiny world. Isolation without being isolated, trapped in the confines of a tiny world too minute for your thoughts. It was just too small, all the same things over and over again, nothing changing, nothing ever differing, like seeing the same color forever. An expanse of bright red. Bloody and beautiful. The ringing in your ears is eternal, and wondering if it ever will go away is a waste of energy.

There’s voices but you can’t hear them, they don’t speak loud enough to be heard over the ringing, to be called to attention over the vastness of your world. Then you get pushed by an invisible force, shoving you out of the way, and you hear voices, louder and louder, growing closer and closer. They shout in your ear, and then it’s not just voices but the sound of bullets.

The mud drenches you, sticking all over your skin and drying over your clothes despite the fact that it’s still raining. In the darkness you can’t see a thing, as shining a light would give away your position. Only the flare of firing guns gives you any idea that you’re still alive.

No one’s even specifically shouting at you - it’s hard to notice someone crouched in the mud, clutching their gun like releasing it would surely make them slip from the dregs of sanity. You don’t have to look around to know you aren’t the only one positioned like that, and you don’t have to even think to know you should be shooting. So you turn, cock your gun, and you start shooting blindly into the darkness, praying that you don’t get hit.

It doesn’t occur to you to have a plan, to move from your position, to maybe even try to look for a specific target. You just move your gun every now and then and shoot, aiming for sounds when they come.

When day breaks they’re dead and you’re alive. It’s as simple as that.

All the people you know hold guns now. All you knew seems so distant, like all your life was was a dream and that this was reality. This shivering wasteland, seeping into your skin and poisoning your blood with every movement. When you try to speak, all that comes out is a gush of dry wind.

Despite the cold, nothing felt real. The frost covered your skin, and it numbed every sense you had till nothing remained but the bones barely holding you up. You tried to cover your arms with your hands, to try to rub some warmth into them but your hands fall off in the freeze, and though you wanted to cry, the tears come out hot.

They burned into your senses, and you come back to yourself.

It hasn’t rained in days. The sun beats hot above but you’re sitting, eating lunch, dissipating into the background like the trees swaying in the sweet ocean breeze. You don’t think, but you realize your hands have not fallen off. You lift your fork to eat, and as your head leans forward, you feel the slightest wind brushing against your cheek, and you feel the tears.

They were there. But painted into the background, no one notices, so you don’t pay any attention to it either. You eat, you don’t know if it’ll be a while till your next meal. When you finish, you sit in front of your empty plate and you do nothing but stare at it. You hope to God that you won’t slip away again, because despite everything in this world, the other one is worse. It’s constant. In this world, the sun can still shine in a beautiful sort of way, even burning your eyes open.

When you breathe and close your eyes, you find peace, but the anxiety gets to you in an instant.

They’re watching.

They’re just waiting for you to rest.

Close your eyes.

Relax your sore muscles.

They’re shooting.

Everyone goes for their guns, no matter how far away they are and the man is dead in an instant. An intruder sneaking into the camp and shooting dead a man you did not know, and when you look down, your gun is in your hands, and it’s just been fired, and you haven’t even broken a sweat.

You drop your gun and close your eyes into darkness. When you try to open them, it doesn’t work.

Darkness consumed you, filling every crevice you had, spilling out and choking your thoughts. You couldn’t breathe, but you were at peace for once. You relaxed into the control of the ink, letting it clog your lungs and fill up your mouth with its’ bittersweet taste.

And then you saw yourself, your eyes black with the darkness, the goo spilling from your mouth as your body hung lifeless in the empty space. Like a puppet you began to speak, but it wasn’t your voice, it was your commanding officer. As much as you trust him, you couldn’t seem to trust him now as he controlled you.

As you watched a gun fell into the hands of the puppet version of you, dripping with the void covering its’ body. It raised its’ gun to you.

Shoot, your commanding officer said. You can trust me.

When the puppet shoots, you can open your eyes again, and when you do it’s evening but you haven’t moved from where you were in the afternoon. The feeling of distrust lingers with you and you glare at people who look at you before remembering your place.

The shaking in your hand doesn’t stop but you can see again, and you thank God for that. You never want to close your eyes again. You never want to sleep again. You can’t end your stream of consciousness.

Your eyes stay on the ground, but you know the stars are above you. They’re always there, watching over you, but they don’t care. They’re distant, cold and apathetic to any plight, just like people, though stars don’t pretend like they care.

When you regain your hearing just a moment later you hear people talking, conversing quietly, and the strumming of a guitar. For the first time since afternoon you divert your attention from the dirt at your feet, looking up to the man playing.

He’s shirtless, covered in dirt and grime, and his pants are slacking way below the belt line with boots that are too big for his feet but he’s playing a beautiful song you’ve heard before. Or maybe you haven’t, but the tune reverberates through your empty bones that are calloused from living.

You realize he’s been playing for a bit now. The men surrounding him have gone quiet, and it’s not a happy, appreciative quiet, it’s a silence that hits too close to the heart, and you know it’s not about love or drinking.

“Terrible is the day when I return to you, an open shell, a broken ghost of the person you once knew,” he sings, and you can feel the stinging in your gut spill up into your eyes, but tears don’t fall. Not yet.

“Love me or leave me I’ll love you just the same, though memories have faded I’ll always know your name,” he sings, and his voice is beautiful, and it petrifies you.

“I know you see me different now. Pain has a way of changing what heaven’s endowed,” he sings, and he moves onto the chorus. You only know it’s the chorus because the men gather themselves together again like they hadn’t been struck down by the thought of home.

“Burning through my veins I feel you, like I exist only to know you,” is what the song ends with, and the men get back to talking. You watch, noticing as they try to act normally. It’s not an easy thing to do.

You decide to move your body, and it’s an incredibly conscious decision in the way that you almost have to convince yourself. I need to move my body, you think, but do you? I need to go to sleep, you know, but you can’t let your guard down.

A sharp pain flows through your chest, starting in the heart and flowing down to your legs, numbing them. Your eyes grow hazy and you can’t see, all you can feel is the ragged breaths you take, and the hand on your shoulder that’s suddenly come. You can’t balance, and it feels more like you’re dying than falling. It’s not how you expected to go out.

Unlike all the other times, you’re too grounded in reality, but your head’s far off in the sky. It’s like you’re being stretched beyond the limit, beyond the atmosphere till you’re nothing but a thin thread of a person. The pains flowing through your system keep you awake, keeps you in reality but your breathing sends you off. It’s all too much, a stark difference from the times when all you can feel is one sensation. Whether that’s cold or loneliness, it’s better than feeling everything at once.

There’s a nurse hanging above you, her hair in tight curlers, dressed in a nightgown. It’s scandalous but you don’t really care as she helps you to your feet. Your head pounds like someone’s playing drums with your skull, and your legs don’t hurt but they don’t work right either.

“Looks like a panic attack,” the nurse says offhandedly, and clutching your head with dizziness you hear the men around you sniggering. It’s just panic. You aren’t being sent home.

“I’d advise to have someone lookin’ out for ya. If you have another one a’ these episodes in the midst of fightin’, you’re gonna need someone to pull ya back t’ reality,” she says, and half comprehending her words you nod. She’s basically telling you to get a friend, to find someone to look out for you, but no one looks out for anyone but themselves. It’s only common sense. You don’t lose the sheer panic of being shot at but it becomes numb, and nothing feels quite real except the bullet whizzing past and lodging into the tree you’re crouching beside.

Nothing feels real till you’re feeling the jump of the gun in your hands again, realizing as it fires off that you’re killing a person. A human, with a wife and children, with a whole other life they were praying to get back to. It’s hard not to think that the other side isn’t thinking the same thing. As soon as you start to sympathize with them, it gets harder to kill them, and you can’t have that.

You don’t want to kill them, but they want to kill you, you repeat in your head like a mantra as you see a rocket fly into the air. It’s not true, you know that, but… there’s no other way you’d pull the trigger. Really, you’re aware that the other side is thinking the exact same thing.

There’s bullets colliding with blood and dirt alike all around you, but what gets you is the slip of your foot in a patch of not yet dry mud. Your stance falls and your heart quickens, breath growing short as you lose yourself. The panic is senseless, just move your aim to where it was before but you can’t seem to think. Heart palpitating, palms sweaty, you lose the ability to fire, and in doing so, the ability to protect yourself.

“Hey, watch it kid,” a man elbows you, shaking you, but it does little to stop shaking hands. It does stop you from going any further though, and he notices this, so for a moment he looks at you.

“Snafu.”

“What?” You say, and you realize it’s the first thing you’ve said in ages.

“My name, Snafu. Now pay attention,” he says, shoving your head towards the enemy line. You don’t hear him muttering about you being a fucking idiot.

You pay attention to the jump of the gun when it fires. That night, you sleep in the trenches, taking shifts and never really falling asleep. It’s your turn to guard first, and the man from before who called himself Snafu sleeps. His gun is clutched tight into his chest and you realize with cutting awareness that you absolutely cannot slip away, you cannot go off into the world of feeling everything or only one thing. Either one tears you away from reality, and if you stray from reality, it’s not just you who’s dead.

You have little trouble staying awake, your eyes peeled open wide, dry with unblinking. The silence is stifling in the air like a heavy cloud of fog over the mind, but you dare not make a noise.

Halfway through the night Snafu wakes up and without word he stands guard. You hesitate to fall asleep but he nods, and you do so, and your sleep is dreamless. When you awake your knuckles are sore from clutching your rifle and your jaw feels numb from grinding, and the headache you’ve had all day is worse than ever.

“Morning Songbird,” he says when you stir, the nickname sending you into your own curiosity.

“What?”

It’s the second time you’ve said that.

“I said, good mornin’,” he chuckles, and it’s clear that he’s been informed the fighting is over for now. In the clearness of the day you hear an accent, not bothering to identify it as you watch him clean his gun.

“No, the other thing,” you say as you sit up.

“Songbird?”

“Yeah.”

“Oh, you were moanin’ like a songbird all night,” he drawls, punctuating with a pointed look to your crotch.

You say nothing but you cover yourself with your too large shirt, turning away from the vulgar man. You didn’t remember having any dream like that.

For the next few days he looks out for you. You weren’t sure if the nurse had asked him because you certainly hadn’t, but you appreciate it anyway, though sometimes he was odd. He never let you slip away, and it almost drove you insane, as it was the only release from reality. Like a man starved for cigarettes you needed to get away, if only for a moment. Just to dream. To be somewhere else.

You let yourself do so as it pours down rain. There hasn’t been any fighting for a while and it puts you on edge, wondering in anxious worry when it’ll come back. If you’ll be the first casualty that warns the others to be on alert. Still you lay down outside your tent, being pounded by heavy sheets of rain whipping over the island. Snafu is nowhere to be found, so you close your eyes, and all you can see is blue.

It was a bright blue, pastel almost, faded and beautiful in a way that abandoned buildings are. Nothing else existed in the void, overrun by sheets of white falling from the sky. They came down in gentle drifts, lying down across the puddles on the ground. You watched in amusement as they got soaked, turning a shade of grey as the puddles no longer reflected blue, the sheets no longer bright white.

Far off in the distance there’s blackness. In large chunks it grew closer like lights shutting off in a giant warehouse, until you’re running as fast as you could, trying to stay in the light. It’s of no use, light is faster than footsteps, and you eventually get swallowed up in the dark. You just stand, unmoving, unsure. All you felt was the anxiety creeping up your shoulders, caressing with gentle touches that reverberated into your body with loving hatred.

When you wake up, you’re shaking. Full body practically vibrating, being slapped awake by Snafu.

“What’d I tell you? Don’t drift off,” he hisses at you, standing up to tower over your lying form. You sit up, still staring at him, glaring, actually. He sits down in a chair beside you, taking his godawful knife out and picking at his skin. It’s gross, but some people think you’re fucked up in the head, so you try not to say anything.

You sit up against the tent, your back leaning on boxes inside. Every now and then he looks down at you, making sure you’re not drifting, and you back up with a tired look. Whenever you close your eyes and breathe deeply he punches you, which doesn’t help for any of your calming techniques but you assure yourself he’s not an asshole, he’s just looking out for you.

Of course the only person to look out for you is the biggest asshole you’ve ever met.

The rain doesn’t stop for a few hours. When it does he sits down beside you, too close for comfort, still picking at the hard skin of his lower palm till it bleeds.

“That’s gross,” you say, grimacing as you have to watch him up close.

“Your singin’ is gross,” he mutters, not looking up from his skin. He’s now cleaning his nails, still with the knife.

“I don’t sing,” you say quickly. You don’t, you never have. It’s never been something that interests you. He just looks up at you with a confused glare for a moment before looking back down, shaking his head.

You _don’t_. You don’t know what his problem is.

He only explains a week or so later, though your grasp on the days is flimsy at best. You’re not one for keeping calendar notebooks.

“What’s that song you sing anyway?” He asks you as he leads the way back to the tent. You’d be leading if you were faster, but you can’t find it in you to care. The only thing keeping you vitalized and alert was your other world, and it’s gone now thanks to the shining asshole who won’t stop talking.

“I don’t sing,” you repeat yourself from days ago.

“Yeah you do. Y’ close yer eyes and start mumblin’ some shit with a tune. Can’t make out the words though,” he notes at the end, looking back at you. “It’s when y’ don’t sing that I get worried.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about. You’re the one who picks at his skin.”

“Guess we all got something fucked about us,” he says, seeing he’s not getting an answer. You don’t have an answer, though he doesn’t believe this.

You feel less willing to slip away knowing that you apparently mumble to yourself.

There’s a skirmish in broad daylight, and even though it makes it easier to aim, it sets everyone on edge. The sun makes you an easier target, and the trees do little to shade you from the overbearing heat. In the short five hours you don’t talk, you don’t phase out, and your finger doesn’t move from the trigger except to load more ammunition. By the time it’s done, every movement sets you off and you notice every little thing.

The dirt is riding up your back, mixing with the sweat of the intensity of it all. Your hands are shaking, and with them clutched around the gun pressed to your chest you can feel your dog tags digging into your skin. It’s the first time in months that you’ve felt hunger boil away at your stomach, grumbling like a cauldron. Your breath passes ragged between your lips, even and repetitive in a sickening way.

“Hey Birdie,” Snafu calls out to you, and though his voice grates against your nerves it pulls you back down. Of course your nickname has to have a nickname.

“Hey.”

“It’s quiet,” he says simply.

You don’t reply, but you follow the others when they dig themselves out of the pit. Behind you, you hear him grunt as he follows you.

Thoughts blurred your mind, changing a colorful palette into a mix of everything, eventually ending up in an odd looking brown. Nothing was distinct from the other, obscured by the fog of your mind. There’s a subtle pounding at the back of your mind but it wasn’t really there, more of a sensation making your mind fall flat. Eyes rolled into the back of your head and your breath seemed deeper, encasing your body in the lightness it brought.

Everything was brown. An uncreative color, swamping your sight, blocking your thoughts from being real. It seemed the whole of the world was covered in a fuzziness, and everything felt numb. Too numb to be real, but it was the only thing that existed, so you felt it despite it’s lack of feeling when it graced your fingers. Like holding air.

He kicks your leg, waking you up from your trance.

“You’re helpless without me,” he says, and you glare at him again. He’s used to the look and doesn’t react with anything but a dirty smile. Despite his dirty face and unruly hair, his teeth are pretty much perfect.

“I’m fine without you,” you mumble, resuming eating. He’s sliding in next to you, crowding your space even though there’s plenty of room on either side of you. His thigh and arm are right up against you, open skin on the rough cloth of your jacket.

“One a’ these days, I’m not gonna be there and you’re gonna get shot,” he teases, and you don’t think about how he’s not wrong.

You don’t think about it at all.

When he’s waking you up in the dead of night from your slumber inside your tent, you don’t think about him. You don’t think at all, grabbing your gun from your bedside immediately. He jumps back as you grab it, holding his hands out like you’re about to shoot him.

“Careful there Songbird,” he says, coming slowly closer as you let your arms drop.

“What’s wrong?” You ask as soon as he stops talking.

“… Nothin’. You were tossin’, thought you were having some kind a’ nightmare,” he says, looking confused at you as he steps back to his own cot.

“No,” you say.

“Alright, fine.”

He sits back on his cot, but you don’t put your gun back down, and you don’t lie back down. He doesn’t either.

“Why do you hate me?” He asks, but you have an immediate answer in the form of a question.

“Why do you _like _me?”

He scowls like you’d offended him. In one quick movement he lies down, the flimsy blanket over his shoulders, his back turned to you once more.

You want to leave it at that. You want to put the stupid gun down and go to sleep, ignore the whole conversation, but you can feel animosity and contrition stinging the air, thick with emotion as it drifted over to you. You know you said the wrong thing.

“Good night,” you say, never having said that to him before. You weren’t sure when the last time you said that was in general - probably when you were back in the States. As you lie down you hear him breathe deeply.

“‘Night, Birdie,” he says, and all is forgotten.

There’s nothing to do when you wake up. You sit there, staring at the ceiling. Snafu asks what you’re doing, but you don’t reply for several minutes, so he leaves you alone. Your eyes are open, you’re not drifting off. He stays in the tent for a while with a few of your other tent mates before wandering off, leaving you in your sleep clothes, still covered in your blanket, staring at the mesh ceiling.

You don’t think too much. Thoughts infect you despite your attempts to ward them off, whispering doubts into your head, and you wonder.

This man is helping you. You’ve never done a thing for him. You’ve never even been nice to him, and still he’s helping you, waking you up, making sure you don’t spiral, making sure you’re still firing.

Even through all your thoughts you don’t shift a muscle. Sometimes your eyes twitch slightly to the left or right but they stay still for the most part. It’s only when evening comes that anyone asks you of anything.

“C’mon, gotta eat something,” Snafu says, pushing you with his hand. He then turns back around, flipping his ripped, dirty shirt around in the air.

It’s a conscious thought, moving every muscle in your body takes up an enormous amount of both mental and physical energy. As soon as your finger twitches though, a panic seizes your heart and every emotion inflames ten times it’s normal size. Everything overcrowds your air and your heart beats too fast, breaking away at the bones holding everything in place.

You choke on your own tongue, losing your breath with every blink of your eyes. It feels like there’s anvils covering your body, pressing you into the ground with their unrelenting weight.But there’s a touch on your shoulder and for a moment, it feels like there’s nothing but clouds.

“Come back down Songbird, come on,” he says, and you can feel his heat coursing through your blood through the contact he makes, even through his breath speaking right next to your head.

When you can finally breathe again, your head pounds intensely, making you sick like your brain was replaced with vomit. Snafu’s hanging over you, his brow furrowed and mouth parted just slightly.

“You okay?” He asks, his hand on your cheek in a much more intimate manner. It’s weird, and the contact is unlike anything you’d felt in months, if not all your life. Shivers course down your spine, and it does nothing for the anxiety reverberating through your veins. You bolt upright, the sudden movement sending a pulse of pain to your head that debilitates you.

“I’m fine. Lost my breath,” you say, a flimsy excuse. You knew what it felt like, it felt like you were dying, but it was just a panic attack. Just a panic attack.

“You were choking.”

“And you’re ugly, we’re all a little obvious aren’t we?”

You stand, forcing him off your cot. He doesn’t move past that though, standing chest to chest with you, though he’s slightly shorter. You wait for him to move, slightly winded by your movement, but he doesn’t, his own breathing quickened. You frown, confused as hell as to why he’s like this - why does he insist on bothering you all the time?

Instead of asking him, you push him out of the way. It’s a gentle push but he still looks as offended as he did last night, like he’s saying to himself _how dare you not put up with my bullshit without complaint?_

Still, he moves, and the two of you eat, him still sitting uncomfortably close as he touches as much of you as he can. His thigh is pressed against yours, the naked skin of his arm still hot against your jacket. You don’t mention it, you try not to act like you notice, like it’s not crowding the processes of your mind. It doesn’t bother you.

You have a hard time convincing yourself of that.

Especially, when out of sight of anyone else, he starts using his left hand sitting beside yours to trace the veins of your arm. You swallow thick, and suddenly you can barely even taste the food anymore.

He loves to piss you off.

Yeah, you tell yourself, that’s what he’s doing. Pissing you off. In fact, he can’t get enough of it, because every meal from that point on, when no one is looking, he traces your skin. Nonsensical shapes most of the time, lines, tracing from freckle to freckle but sometimes you swear he’s writing letters. Scribbling down something with feather touch, drawing something he never wants seen.

It’s raining hard this morning, wind blowing sheets of rain against the tents. Whenever you go outside it hits like tiny daggers, so you elect to stay inside, only going out for necessity. It’s a quiet day, so most of your tent mates are in as well. Snafu is sitting across from you on his cot, reading a book you know he’s read over five times.

It’s the perfect time to drift off, to only feel one thing. It’s addicting, but lately you haven’t been doing it as much as you’d like to. Lying down on your own cot, looking over at Snafu, you find you don’t want him to worry.

It’s an odd feeling.

The next time you’re in a shootout you can’t find him anywhere, and for the first time in a long, long while you felt fear. Actual fear, the kind that flows freely through you without hesitation, like all the experience suddenly meant nothing. Even with your shaking hands and blurry eyes you manage to shoot, keeping aim, _keep shooting, keep shooting._

You keep shooting blindly as the mantra repeats chaotically in your head, repeating over and over, overlapping on itself as you feel your breath quicken. Everything is a blur and you can’t feel a single thing.

All you feel is the weight in your hands.

All you feel is the jump of the gun.

Till all you can feel is the bullet in your chest.

You fall, blinking rapidly as the sky seems to change color. Your breath escapes you in rapid pants and you desperately cling to what little air you can. Bringing your hands up to your chest, they get painted red.

Then he decides to show up.

“Birdie, fuck,” he says immediately, his words slurred in your head as he crawls up next to you, out of the way of the fire. He clings to you like it’s the only thing grounding him, like holding you closer to him will save you.

“Snaf,” you whisper out with the little air you have, grasping his arm. It’s all you have. It’s all you’re going to know. There’s spots in your vision and you can’t feel anything below your torso - you know this isn’t going to end well.

“Hey, hang in there, you’re gonna be okay,” he says, and one thing you see clearly is the red in his eyes. He’s crying. For someone who’s never been anything but mean to him. You wonder with your own red eyes why he cared so much. He looks up, his cold tears falling onto your face as he searches desperately for a medic.

“Snafu,” you murmur, still clutching his arm with your death grip. You tug, and with that he looks back down at you, his entire face a mess, all covered in dirt and cut up. He leans in, pressing his head into your neck. It’s embarrassingly hot on your empty skin, such a stark difference from the cold numbness of everything else.

“I love you,” he cries softly into your skin, and it all comes crashing down on you. As he repeats the words over and over again you remember every single thing he’s ever done for you and you wonder how you could’ve been such an asshole. And as he presses a wet with tears kiss to your neck, you realize you love him too.

You try to get the words out but they won’t come, the breath wasted on the begging of his name on your lips. With cruel fate his tears fall upon your lips, taunting you for your own inability to speak causing his misery.

With what little energy you have you expend it on raising your hand, bringing it to his face to direct him. He follows where you lead and, in the pouring rain, knee deep in mud and bullets and mortar shells, you kiss him. He weighs heavy against you but so do your clothes, so does the rain, so does the gun in your lap.

So does the weight of everything you missed out on.

It’s heavier than anything.

The last thing you feel is his lips, and the last thing you hear is him whispering against them, saying ‘I love you,’ over and over again.

What could’ve been haunts you to your last breath, which comes sooner than a kinder God would have allowed.

**Author's Note:**

> well that was intense. i stg im gonna read this in the morning and be so disappointed w myself lmao  
edit: wait nvm, im already disappointed in myself! thanks for reading!


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